


Oh my God, they were roommates!

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AOS Rarepair Exchange, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fluff, Football, Getting Together, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Matchmaker Jemma, Strangers to Lovers, Tropes, Unnecessary Physical Contact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 15:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16856239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: Simmons is moving away for a scholarship, leaving Fitz in need of a flatmate. She suggests a distant cousin of hers, and Fitz discovers that living with Lance Hunter is more enjoyable than he imagined.





	Oh my God, they were roommates!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everythinghappensforareason17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythinghappensforareason17/gifts).



> For the AOS Rarepair Exchange organized on Tumblr. For the "roommates" prompt. 
> 
> Rated T for language.

“I have a solution for your problem.”

Fitz looks up from Jemma’s hands splayed wide and forceful on his desk to her fine wrists, up her arms to the determined shine on her eyes. Exactly what he was expecting to find.

“What, have you figured out how to make the circuit three times as potent at the same time as weighting a half?”

Jemma sits down on his same chair, and despite his scepticism Fitz scoots over to leave more place for her.

“No, silly-”

“Then it’s a shame, because that’s the only problem I have.”

She purses her lips, and something stretches thin and tight inside his stomach; god, he is gonna miss her.

“Fitz, I’m leaving in a week. You need to find a flatmate.”

An ice cold sensation runs down his back. He has not forgotten, of course, but it is one thing to know it in the back of his mind and one another completely to have her saying it so bluntly.

“No, I don’t.”

Jemma bumps her hip against his, and Fitz holds himself with the table to not fall off the chair.

“Yes, you do. For a while, at least, until you get used to it.” She makes a pause, looks to the distance. “Your mum made me promise.”

He wants to throw a tantrum, tell her that he is an adult and he doesn’t need her nor his mum meddling on his life- though the tantrum might not help him prove his point. But they are doing it out of love, and how can he resist that, when he would do anything out of love for the both of them, too?

“I’m listening.”

Jemma claps excitedly.

“Okay, I have this cousin coming to London and he needs a place to stay for six months, and-”

Fitz groans, “So you are solving  _ your _ problem, not mine.”

Jemma elbows him, painfully, on the ribs.

“Leopold James Fitz, don’t be like  _ that _ .”

* * *

Lancelot Hunter is not anything like Fitz was expecting him to be.

In first place, though he and Jemma are distant relatives, it is obvious they are  _ distantly _ distant relatives. There is nothing of his best friend that he can recognize in this bloke, and he is not exactly sure if that is a good or a bad thing. Sure, for someone who hates change as much as he does it would be nice to have some known ground he could walk on. But at the same time, he is not Jemma and never will be, and sometimes it is better to go cold feet on something you are bound to lose.

In second place, they have nothing in common. Hunter is the party type, always going out and about, having ladies over, and making out with them in the most inappropriate places at the most inappropriate times. Fitz is… nothing of that.  

Okay, scratch that. They do have something in common: their parents obviously have a flair for dramatic, ridiculous names, and they both prefer to go by their last name, but it probably would be weird to bond over that. 

* * *

The first thing he notices is that Hunter likes the same beer as him. Or that was his first thought when he got back after an exhausting day of work and found in the fridge a six-pack of mouth-watering ice cold beer cans that he definitely didn’t buy.

He is pacing in the kitchen, pondering over the pros and cons of asking Hunter for one, or going out to buy his own, or just falling into bed face-first and forget about the world, when Hunter’s head shows up from the living room.  

“Hey, mate, I’m going out. Wanna come?” Fitz stops pacing and shakes his head no. Hunter pouts, but turns around without insisting. He appreciates the gesture, but in full honesty, he is a little tired of being put in the position of having to say no every single time. He might as well go out with him once just to stop feeling so much as a hermit crab. “I imagined.” Fitz bites his thumbnail, anxious of being put in the spotlight, and has forgotten everything about the beers, when Hunter’s voice comes from the living room, “That’s why I bought a pack of beers for you to enjoy yourself!”

 

* * *

That afternoon he gulps down two beers before immersing himself in an Amazonian documentary. He leaves money in Hunter’s nightstand, and refuses to think about the implications of Hunter inviting him though he knows Fitz won’t come, Hunter knowing what beer he prefers, Hunter thinking of him while doing grocery shopping.

He didn’t even know Hunter did grocery shopping.

* * *

“Leopold, what are you on about?”

Fitz rubs his eyes and blinks, but the image doesn’t change: Hunter in nothing but a pair of black briefs with a stormtroopers print, leaning against the frame of Fitz’s bedroom, a handful of cash stretched towards him. In the month and a half they have been living together, Fitz has never seen so much skin on him, and after realizing that this is actually happening and not a conjuration of his imagination, he looks pointedly at the floor. Looking at any other part of him except his eyes feels rude, and he can not look him in the eyes without blushing.

“Don’t call me Leopold.” 

It is, by far, not the most important thing to be said about this bizarre set up of a conversation, but he is somewhat glad that it was his knee-jerk reaction. Telling him to put some pants on or to not barge into his bedroom like that would have led to a much more awkward conversation.

Hunter rolls his eyes.

“I know, dumbass. I was using it for, you know, dramatic effect.” He marches inside and throws the money on top of Fitz’s bedside table. “It was, probably, the reason why your parents named you like that, after all.”

Fitz shrugs, and adjusts the blanket so his naked chest won’t be so, well,  _ naked. _ A problem that Hunter obviously doesn’t have.

“They named me  _ that _ because my father is a moron.”

Hunter snorts.

“Fair enough. Now, was he a moron enough to not teach you that when someone buys you a drink, you don’t pay them back?”

He is being teased and he knows it. He is not the shy kid that got pushed around school anymore; now his edges are sharper and he got some bite to defend himself if the need arises. But his throat is dry, and his tongue is swollen, and this feels more like Jemma teasing him than like being bullied.  

“No.”

“Then don’t do it.” Hunter walks to the door, but turns around and winks at him before leaving. “Instead, next time you buy  _ me _ one.”

* * *

It is easy, living with Lance Hunter. 

For starters, he is not Jemma and her color-coded schedule of chores. To continue on the same vein, they are two blokes, and let’s just say that with two blokes left to do things their own way, things can get a little… relaxed.

Now, Fitz is a bit of maniac when it comes to work stuff, but he gets so focused on it that sometimes the basic things of life… slip from between his fingers and his mind. That has always worked well with Jemma since she is, well, kind of the same.

That’s why it is so much of a surprise when Hunter comes knocking on his door with a bowl of chicken soup and a ginger tea.

“You need to eat, mate.”

Fitz, perplexed, tries to look up at him but the force of two nights with almost no sleep and a week of nursing a persistent cold, prevent him from doing such a thing.

“I am fine, Hunter.”

Hunter tuts, and places the bowl on top of his desk with more force than the strictly necessary.

“I’m sorry, you lost the right to decide that when you sneezed for the fifth time. You are under my care now.”

Fitz could fight, could protest, and maybe he might even win, but his eyelids feel like lead and his muscles like cotton, and the soup does smell delicious.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Hunter looks surprised at the way he caved in, and Fitz murmurs something about how he is not actually as grumpy as everyone makes him up to be. “Great, now eat your soup and meet me in the living room when you are done.”

Fitz stops with the spoon in mid-air. He supposed this was just a friendly intervention to force him to eat something, not that it will involve them actually doing anything together.       

“For wha’?”

Hunter rolls his eyes at  him while he opens the blanket cabinet in the hallway.

“To watch a movie, dummy. Nothing cures a cold as well as snuggling on the couch with a movie so terrible you can doze through it.” 

Once again, there are a lot of things he could say, and tantrums he could throw, but really, that sounds amazing.

“Okay, but I want to choose the movie.”

Hunter grins at him, blankets piled high on his arms.

“We'll see about that.”

* * *

Fitz doesn’t have a lot of experience with having male friends, what with Jemma being his closest friend ever since they were sixteen years old, and not being very adept to socializing as a rule. Still, he is pretty sure that most male friendships don’t involve being huddled together under a ton of blankets and one of them letting the other doze off on his shoulder.

He freaks out a little, because as much as he does not have a problem with affection (since when he does not have a problem with affection?), he is not sure the same is true about Hunter, and so far they have been doing great, and also he promised Jemma, and doesn’t want to ruin this. Any of this. So, of course, he freaks out but doesn’t do anything about it.

(He considers patting Hunter on the back and saying something to the amounts of  _ No homo, eh? _ , but, one, he’d rather nick himself; and, two, who is he even kidding,  _ yes homo _ .)

The thing is, he doesn’t want to be one of those creeps that feature in romcoms as Not The Love Interest.

Correction, he  _ isn’t  _ one of those creeps, and that’s why he is not going to hit on his roommate, no matter how hot and handsome he is. 

He panics about it all the way through his deadline and his cold, and when friday comes, he is already sulking over the girl Hunter will probably bring back home. (Sulking because he doesn’t like people in his space, not because Hunter will be with a girl, whatareyoueventalkingabout.) He drags his feet towards the kitchen to seek solace in food, and is met with a six pack of beers, and a ton of snacks that aren’t his, and what the hell is going on.

“Hunter!” He calls to the living room. “There is someone coming over?” That is not generally Hunter’s modus operandi for the weekend, but if there is people coming over, Fitz wants to know it to better brace himself.         

“Yeah, your hurt feelings!” Hunter calls while getting closer, and Fitz frowns. “Because we are gonna crush you guys tonight.”

Ah, the game. He is talking about the game. A cozy feeling spreads through his chest. 

“You are not even from Liverpool!”

Hunter makes his appearance in the kitchen then, snatches the bag of pretzels from Fitz’s hands and punches him softly on the shoulder. Somehow, it doesn’t feel like an attack at all.

“I am from every team that plays against yours.” He sticks his tongue out, and Fitz rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. “It is a good deal, since your team  _ sucks _ .”     

“Take that back!”

“Nah, mate. You don’t take back something that is true.”

In that moment, Fitz can see as clear as if they were tangible, all the options that have opened in front of him. He can let it go. He can play offended. He can go for a verbal jab. He can also wrestle an apology out of him.

It is clear which is the road he usually chooses; he has gotten his sharp tongue and sharper wit from experience after all. But the warmth in his chest makes him want to be bold, and so he stretches an arm around Hunter’s waist, removing his possibilities of escape, and with his other hand searches all over Hunter’s arm and flank until he finds an obviously ticklish spot.

Hunter is taller and stronger than him, and he probably knows half a dozen of techniques to break free if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t, which tells Fitz that besides the shrieking and the writhing, Hunter is kind of enjoying this too. They stay like that for maybe a minute or two, tangled together, and Fitz is the one to break apart; Hunter was rubbing a little too much against him, and if until now he didn’t notice that Fitz has a bit more interest in him than the regular one should have on a housemate, well, he will notice now for sure.

“There, you have been punished,” he says, and his words lose any intended effect because his voice is high and breathy.

Hunter turns around before straightening up, and something rubbery stucks on Fitz’s throat; he is already forming an apology in his mind about going too far and stepping over boundaries when Hunter spins around and tackles Fitz against the counter by surprise.

“Punished my arse!,” he yells while he somehow goes straight for all the more sensitive points on Fitz’s body.

Fitz writhes wildly against him, but he  _ is  _ ticklish and Hunter’s hands pressing his wrists against the counter are really strong, and he is a spring stretched too thigh, and his body is at the same time buttery and tense and on the point of breaking.

Hunter goes against him mercilessly, pressing against his body and touching him everywhere- roughly and jokingly, yes, but also full of intention-, and Fitz’s head spins. Hunter’s stubble rubs against his cheek, and his hands feel like they are on fire against Fitz’s skin, and  _ fuck, _ if he wasn’t certain that there was something starting to go aflame inside of him, now his entire fucking body is on fire.  He should put an end to this before it goes out of control completely and he ends up doing something he will regret. He should end this. He should-

And that’s when Hunter kisses him.

Immersed in the sea of sensations, it takes Fitz’s brain a second to catch up, and during that second, he freaks out hard thinking that he did indeed fuck it up after all, until he realizes that- no doubt about it- it was Hunter who initiated the kiss and not him. 

His body- that was already in the verge of collapsing from the mixed signals of anxiety and desire- finally cracks, and he goes slack against Hunter, who luckily holds him up. The feeling of his arms, strong and certain, around him, finally snaps him out of it to start returning the kiss. He tugs on the t-shirt Hunter is wearing, and that earns him a groan that he eats up hungrily. A kiss is a kiss and not some out of the world experience, but Hunter is  _ good, _ and Fitz likes him, and his tongue does wonders against the back of Fitz’s teeth that make his jeans feel even tighter than before. 

He breaks apart, needing to regain control of the situation and himself, and there are a millions things he could say or ask, but he settles on, "Are you sure?" 

His hands are trembling on the sides of Hunter’s shoulders, but he does know what he wants. He is just not sure if he is allowed to want it at all. It would hurt as a bitch if Hunter were to say now that this has all been a misunderstanding, but better sooner than later, he guess. 

There is something sparkling in Hunter’s eyes, and it makes his throat go dry and his head spin. Hunter slots his thigh in between Fitz’s, trusting against him in a way that is making his dizziness go out of whack. Hunter places his hand on the side of his throat, ember hot against his sensitive skin, and Fitz rolls his eyes at how good it feels. 

"I am the one who kissed you, love."

He will never know from where comes the determination that has never been one of his defining traits, but he decides not to look a gift horse in the mouths. Because instead of second-guessing what Hunter is saying, and his own worthiness of it, and going on a long ramble about how people retract themselves from kisses all the time, _ there has been studies on it, don’t laugh at me, _ he grabs Hunter by the back of his head and presses their foreheads together.

"Then take me to bed."

The face-splitting grin that erupts on Hunter’s face at hearing those words makes him look younger, and butterflies do somersaults in Fitz’s stomach.

“I won’t make you ask twice, love.”

* * *

The next morning, Hunter still fast asleep on his bed, he paces in tiptoes around the house. He is full of nervous energy he needs to burn down; he used up quite a bit of energy last night alright, but waking up and realizing that it has neither be a dream nor Hunter got a freak out (yet) over it, feels like celebratory to him. Except that Hunter is still asleep, and he looks peaceful (and, let’s face it:  _ so hot) _ sleeping on Fitz’s bed that Fitz can not find it within himself to wake him.  

Instead, he calls Jemma. He is not a fan of phone calls, but there is a suspicion that has been nesting on his brain for quite a while now, and he has to clear it.

“Fitz! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you, and so early! Did you fall out of bed?”

He doesn’t even quip back at her teasing, too focused on his goal, "Did you know  _ this  _ will happen, Jemma?". He doesn’t find the courage to say the words out loud, not even to her, not yet. He uses a suggestive intonation instead, and if he is right about his suspicions, she will understand. 

“That what will happen?” God, she sucks so bad at lying; her voice gets all high and breezy, and he can almost see her all jittery.

“Simmons.” He doesn’t even use an accusatory tone, just the usual no-nonsense he uses to stop her rambling, and after a long pause, she sighs.

“Fine. Yes, I was counting on it. You know, a broken heart and a lonely soul.” he doesn’t ask her what she means by that. He will have time later for that. “It had to work out. And I can not tell you how glad it makes me that it did indeed worked out.”

He rolls his eyes, even though he is smiling. He knows  _ she knows  _ he is both rolling his eyes and smiling.

“You are a sap.” He teases her with no real heat behind his words. He is just glad he is not getting choked up, what with his best friend setting him up and it  _ working. _ God, did it work.

On the other side of the line, Simmons gasps, outraged, at the same time that a pair of arms lace themselves around Fitz’s waist and while he turns around to receive the good morning kiss from Hunter- morning breath be damned-, he misses Jemma’s come back, “I'm not a sap, I’m a  _ romantic, _ you brute!”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
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>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
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> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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